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Have you ever wondered what literary types like to read? What books do writers and publishers enjoy discussing? Read on to learn how Meg Cox and her group of "crazy busy" New Yorkers make room for a reading group in their lives, and what books they put on their must-read lists.

Q. Does your group have a name or a theme?
A.We have no special name, but our theme is demonstrated by our slogan, "Good Books by Dead People." I started the group thirteen years ago in New York City with my literary agent, and she said she wanted to stick to fiction and classics. "I read bad books by living authors for work," she said, "so I only want to read good books by dead people."

Q. What is the makeup of your group?
A. We usually have 8 members. The most we've had was 9, and it's usually half men and half women.

Q. How often and where do you meet?
A. We meet monthly at one another's apartments -- since I live outside the city now, and so does my agent, we host at someone else's place when it's our turn.

Q. Do you eat at your meetings?
A. We always start with dinner at 7 p.m., with the host cooking, but we limit gossip and casual chat to dinner and start discussing the book promptly when desert and coffee are served. The menu varies, but one guy makes meatloaf almost every time (it's actually great), except for the time he suggested an awful book and tried to make up for it with a shellfish stew.

Q. Who leads the discussion? Do you use reading group guides?
A. We don't use guides and we don't have a leader. We all jump in--no shrinking violets in our group. We're a very opinionated, very smart, extremely well-read group. Most are writers or work in publishing. One of the guys is a top editor at the New York Times, another is a major appraiser of rare books (he's the book and document expert on the Antiques Roadshow).

Q. How do you choose your books? Do you choose one new book at each meeting, or do you choose the books for a number of meetings ahead of time?
A. When we're done discussing a book we have a sort of free-for-all discussion. What usually happens is someone will say "We've read a lot of 20th century books lately, let's do 19th century," or someone else will say "Let's read a Russian author, it's been so long," or someone else will say "Gee we haven't done a Dickens in ages, and he's so much fun." Usually we choose books month-by-month, but if we want to do something long, we plan ahead. We actually did Ulysses, but had several months to read it. Now we're doing Moby Dick, but it was announced in July for September and we take August off.

Q. What were some of the best discussions or favorite books the group read?
A. Our favorites include ultimate classics like Madame Bovary and War and Peace, but we've also been surprised at some discoveries we made -- we all loved two books by British novelist George Gissing, New Grub Street and The Odd Women. And we went crazy for Germinal by Zola -- an incredibly riveting book about horrible conditions in a mine that lead to a brutally repressed strike. Unforgettable characters and very gritty. We figured the raw sex was the reason none of us had read it in school! One other book that rocked us: Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. That's an awesome book, the kind that rearranges your head, and makes for a great discussion.

Q. How do you keep things fun?
A. That's not hard--we like each other a lot and love to talk about books. We have fun rituals too, like every December during the meeting we have a (book-related) gift exchange. When a member of the group marries, the group gives him or her a special pair of bookends (models of the New York Public Library lions) and if a member has a baby, the other members buy their favorite kids books and brings them in. For our 10th anniversary, we had a party, complete with a book-shaped cake, and the party favors were paper boo kmarks printed with our motto and the words "10 years, 100 books."

Q. What advice would you give to other reading groups?
A. Just try it-- if you love books, this is a great tradition to start.

Q. Do you have any horror stories, amusing anecdotes, or other special tales to tell?
A. No horror stories, except perhaps a few people we tried who didn't work out as members. That's the hardest part--to kick someone out. We started a system of having someone try it a few times, so they can see if they fit with us and if we fit with them. We have been rejected too -- by a scholarly guy who didn't feel our approach was academic enough. We don't deconstruct the books we read, and we always start with a simple question everybody answers: Did you like the book?